There is no subject that has received so much attention and has worried
so many good people as the liquor question. Saloons and drinking never
cease to be problems for our well-meaning temperance people. Why man
created saloons, no one undertakes to answer. The strongest man is
never too strong in a saloon, and the weak is to be pitied. The saloon
is an evil that has been with us a long time and seems to be here
to stay in one form or another. While we cannot eradicate the evil,
especially by extreme methods, can we not modify its influence? We
have tried the probation method, and failed. We have tried the open
saloon, the clubs, the no-treating, the open reform saloon, the wet
and dry division—but the saloons are still with us, and this because
of the fact that the state, the city, property owners, recognize the
saloon legally, through the assessment of heavy licenses and taxes, and
good well-meaning people ask and receive money from the ever-willing
giver, the saloonman, and use it for charitable as well as church
purposes. The world today is heartless in its mad rush for money
getting, and the “graft” is in the minds of thousands of well-meaning,
but over-anxious to get-rich-quick men; among them the saloonman. Let
us suggest to our saloonmen how they can stop a great deal of misery
in the world. We have in mind a saloon that was “made good” by five
newsboys. “A real live saloon, where politicians congregated to lay
plans for work, and whose owner had an eye to making money, and saw
nothing else, even to the ruining of boys and men.”
“Say, pres.,” said a newsboy from the saloon district, and an officer
of an auxiliary, “Jimmy Smith is drunk and laying in the alley at the
saloon where politicians hold their meetin’s. The bar-tender throwed
him out.”
The books showed Jimmy Smith’s father was a “ward politician,” a good
fellow who was often taken home drunk by his son, a newsboy. Jimmy was
eleven years old, very bright and intelligent for his age. He learned
to drink liquor through his father and mother sending him to the saloon
for beer, and “dropping in the alley on the way home and tasting the
beer, until he began to like it.”
To the question, “did you ever see Jimmy drink in the saloon?” the boys
answered that it was a common thing; “but today when the bar-tender
took Jimmy’s nickel, and he was full, he throwed him out. He said he
didn’t want the kid to disgrace his place.”
Three of the best officers were called, they went to the alley, and
took Jimmy home. Three of the five boys who were assigned this case,
belonged to a gang and were familiar with all the inside workings of
a saloon, they were never slow in showing their appreciation of a
saloonman who defended them, and who turned them down for entering
the saloon. The method adopted by the boys was their work. They knew
the proprietor of the saloon, and knew him to be a very kind-hearted
man. No person ever asked him in vain for a donation to any cause. His
own boys were model young men, stood high in school, and associated
with the best of church members. Strange to say the two sons of the
saloonman were regular at Sunday-school. It is a fact that when any
society, church or other organization desired aid, this saloonman was
sought after by a dozen persons. They knew he was easy. This man in
his home, on the street, in the lodge room (and he belonged to many
societies), in any public gathering, was recognized as an honest man;
but behind the bar he saw nothing but money.
He never thought he was doing a wrong by taking the last cent from
a drunken man; it was business, and that was why he was there. When
reminded of it he simply replied that, “I might as well have it as any
one else, for someone will get it.” Often he said: “He is bound to
drink and the best way is to let him drink up all his money and that is
an end of it.”
When the newsboys called upon him to plead for their friend, Jimmy,
they were received with, “the utmost attention and kindness.” The
following is what the chairman reported:
“We said to the boss, we come to see you about Jimmy Smith and his
father. You see Jimmy has been in bad company, the bad company was
at his home, his father an’ mother. He learned the habit of drinking
by tasting beer he was sent after by his father, and he said when he
learned to drink that your clerk gave him a glass of beer every time he
came after it. So the other day your bar-tender threw him out of the
saloon. He had gradually taught the boy to drink, and when he began to
get so that it annoyed him, he didn’t want him. We come to see if you
won’t please stop giving Jimmy any more drink and tell your man to
throw him out of the saloon before he drinks. We’ll stand for that, but
we won’t stand for his pitching him in the alley when he’s got all of
Jimmy’s money and is drunk. As to his father, we don’t want you to sell
him anything when you see he has enough. Don’t take the last cent he
has when you know he is full already. Send him home. His family needs
every cent. And don’t sell Jimmy any beer if he comes with the bucket.”
The boys were treated with great kindness by the owner of the saloon
who promised to do more than they asked of him. His bar-tenders were
instructed, under penalty of dismissal, not to permit a newsboy in the
saloon.
“I realize the wrong being done to the boys,” he said to the president,
“and it is through thoughtlessness that we permit the boys to come here
at all. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. One of my relatives has an interest
in a commercial college. I’ll buy this boy, Jimmy, a scholarship if
he’ll go to school.”
Jimmy was only too glad to accept.
Two years pass, and Jimmy is about to graduate from the college. The
manager said: “I have four men after this boy. He has the right kind
of push in him to make a splendid business man.”
Four years later Jimmy received a monthly salary of $100, and during
that time has assisted in helping many a street boy.